July 31, 2013 -- SwpTvUK -- The following panel discussion -- involving Paul Le Blanc, a speaker from the SWP and Gilbert Achcar -- took place at Marxism 2013, organised by the British Socialist Workers Party. Questions addressed included Lenism today, "left reformism", the left unity process underway in Britain today and the crisis in the SWP. It is followed by a vigorous discussion from the floor.

July 12, 2013 -- Jadaliyya -- Hossam El-Hamalawy is an Egyptian journalist and activist who maintains the popular site www.arabawy.org. He is associated with the Revolutionary Socialists group. Hossam El-Hamalawy starts by rejecting the "coup vs. revolution"
debate, and addresses briefly the short and long history of the
military's involvement in politics in relation to the June 30 events.

He
then moves on to discuss in more detail the developments of the past
two years, revealing that we cannot assume that "what we had was an 'Ikhwani' [Muslim Brotherhood] regime; it was still the Mubarak regime, but
they gave a share of the cake to the Islamists". The army assumed they
can use the opportunistic leaders to stabilise the streets, according to
Hossam.

July 7, 2013 -- Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal -- The above talk,"Perspectives for the left", was presented by the US International Socialist Organization's Ahmed Shawki at the organisation's annual Socialism conference in Chicago, June 27-30, 2013. It outlines the ISO's current perspectives, in particular it's task of rebuilding the left in collaboration with other parties and tendencies. This and other talks are also available at Wearemany.org.

July 7, 2013 -- Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal -- Below are a number of assessments of the massive protests and military intervention that overthrew the government of Mohamed Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood on July 3, 2013. Check back for new additions.

Egypt: 'The people still want end to regime'

By Tony Iltis

July 7, 2013 -- Green Left Weekly (Australia) -- The
protests which began on June 30 ― and by July 3 had led to the
overthrow of President Mohamed Morsi ― were reportedly the largest in
Egyptian history.

With claims between 10 and 20 million people took part, they were
larger than the protests which led to the overthrow of President Hosni
Mubarak on February 11, 2011.

There are obvious similarities between the downfall of the two
presidents. In both cases it was the military who, despite having
previously been a pillar of the regime, executed the overthrow because
protests were becoming too big and staunch to be easily repressed.

June 27, 2013 -- Green Left TV -- Bob Boughton speaks to GLTV's Linda Seaborn about his experience with the Cuban literacy campaign. Filmed in the GLTV studio at the Hobart Activist Centre.

This is an abridged transcript of an interview Linda Seaborn conducted with Dr Bob Boughton for Green Left Weekly. Boughton helped initiate a Cuba-supported literacy program in the New South Wales town of Wilcannia.

* * *

Tell us about the Cuban “Yes, we can” literacy campaign model.

I came across it while working in Timor Leste where the government
had invited a group of Cubans to help with their national literacy
campaign. They had a model they had developed back in 2000. There are
three aspects to the model. One is they mobilise the whole community
around the issue of literacy and they build a local campaign structure
which drives the campaign.

The second aspect of the model is they have a pre-recorded set of
DVDs on which there are lessons, and when you watch the lessons you are
watching a class learn how to read and write.

The third aspect of the campaign is that when people complete the 64
lessons, the community or local government organise activities which
allow people to continue to build their literacy.

June 16, 2013 -- Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal-- Latin America expert Robert Austin gives an information-packed review of the new book, Latin America's Turbulent
Transitions: The Future of Twenty-First Century Socialism, by Roger
Burbach, Michael Fox and Federico Fuentes. The book is a detailed
exposition and analysis of the powerful social movements challenging
Imperialism across the South American continent.

Robert Austin is an honorary fellow at the school of history, philosophy, religion and classics, University of Queensland, St Lucia.

June 30, 2013 -- Green Left Weekly -- Frances
O’Grady, head of the British Trade Union Congress (TUC), set the tone
in the opening session of the People's Assembly in London on June 22,
declaring: “The Bullingdon boys are waging class war against ordinary
people. We will retaliate, it is time to fight back against a government
of millionaires.”

O'Grady's reference to Conservative Party Prime Minister David Cameron and
Chancellor George Osborne by the exclusive upper-class Oxford University
society they belonged reflects the anger at the Conservative-Liberal
Democrats war on the poor.

More than 4000 anti-austerity campaigners packed Westminster Central Hall on June 22 to launch a national fight-back campaign.

The huge mass gathering was a joint initiative of unions, campaign
organisations and left parties opposed to the coalition government's
savage austerity, which is largely supported by the Labour opposition.

It was preceded by “people's assemblies” in cities across Britain, involving thousands of people.

June 22, 2013 – Links International
Journal of Socialist Renewal -- The massive protests across Brazil have
taken everyone – even the instigating group, the Movimento do Passe Livre (MPL,
Free Fare Movement) – by
surprise. Some international lefties and political analysts have repeated mainstream
Brazilian journalists’ claim that they are the most important protests since
the end of the military dictatorship in 1985. This is false.

June 4, 2013 -- Real News Network -- Today the uprisings
witnessed a new development, when Turkey's Confederation of Public
Workers Unions, KESK, consisting of 11 unions and approximately 240,000
members, declared their decision to stage a massive two-day strike. The
action, which was originally planned for a later date in response to
labor law modifications, was rescheduled to June 4 now, in response to
the government's excessive use of police brutality and its increasingly
undemocratic practices. For the full transcript, click HERE.

May 17, 2013 -- Green Left Weekly -- “I’m in Villawood!”, Jock Palfreeman exclaimed, with the cheerful
exuberance he displayed throughout an interview conducted through glass
and wire-mesh partitions in the gloomy surroundings of the visiting room
of Sofia central prison.

He told Green Left Weekly that it was the plight of refugees illegally detained in Sydney's Villawood detention centre by the Australian government that first radicalised
him. His first protest, as a high school student in Sydney, was a
blockade of the offices of Villawood’s then operator Australasian
Correctional Management on May Day in 2002.

A year later he organised students at his school to attend the “Books
Not Bombs” student walkouts to protest against the war on Iraq.

It was because of his seeming inability to ignore injustice that he is now serving a 20-year sentence in Bulgaria.

They
were demanding an end to economic austerity and for a democratic Sixth Republic
that would overturn the present Fifth Republic, which is dominated by corrupt
and entrenched financial and political elites. The symbol of the march was the
kitchen broom, for the “clean sweep of this insufferable political atmosphere”,
called for by Front de Gauche (Left Front) leader and 2012 presidential
candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon.

A
spectre is haunting the working class of Europe (both east and west) and the
working class of developed capitalism in general. That spectre is the spectre
of communism. For the working class, that frightful hobgoblin is a society of
little freedom, a society of workers without power (in the workplace or
community) and a society where decisions are made at the top by a vanguard
party which views itself as the sole repository of truth. Of course, this was
not what communism meant for Karl Marx and Frederick Engels nor, indeed, for
Lenin.

This is why Marx discussed
primitive (or original) accumulation of capital only at the end of volume 1 of Capital. Exclusive focus upon the emergence of the new
elements, however, is not real history. "Becoming" is two sided: it is
both a coming into being and a passing away. The concept of primitive
accumulation explores only the former; it considers the new being born
but not the old struggling to remain alive. It is, in short, one-sided.
Not only does it fail to explore on its own the struggle of the old for
its reproduction but it also does not consider the interaction, the
morbid symptoms and dysfunction when two sets of productive relations
are engaged in contested reproduction with respect to their control of
the elements of production.

April 2013 -- Red Pepper -- Ken Loach’s The Spirit of ’45 is not just an exercise in nostalgia but a compelling intervention into the politics of the present, writes Alex Nunns.

It’s hard to imagine now, but there was a time when Britain responded
to crippling debts and chronic daily hardship with a decisive move to
the left: nationalising industry, building council houses and creating
brand new public services from scratch.

Their energy is palpable. “It’s like—the things we’ve suppressed for
10, 20 years, it’s all blowing up now”, one worker says (at 3:59 in video above). He
points to a co-worker seriously. “Look at his face. He’s done 24. That’s
what a 24 looks like.” Then he cracks a smile. “Actually, you know, he used to be pretty [bleep] good-looking—at least if you shave that beard!”